Punditology Veepstakes: Which political nerd reigns supreme?

Kari Chisholm

Now that Mitt Romney has picked Paul Ryan to be his running mate, the question arises: Who picked it right?

For starters, no one correctly picked BOTH the candidate and the timing right.

We had 77 prognosticators participate, and Paul Ryan was the fourth most-likely pick. 25 folks picked Rob Portman, 13 picked Marco Rubio, and 7 picked Tim Pawlenty. Just five people correctly named Paul Ryan.

Just two people correctly picked Saturday, August 11, as the date. They are environmental consultant Dwayne Meadows and political activist Dan Lombardi.

So, who correctly called Paul Ryan?

• Matt Hodson, a programmer
• Joyce Reynolds-Ward, a teacher who is an activist with OEA
• Alistair Cox
• Elizabeth Cutler, my sister (!) who works in international development
• Dale Thompson, retired minister, Navy veteran, and Mayor of Condon

To all five of you, we bow down before your awesome powers of prognostication! Great work. We'll give Matt Hodson a bonus huzzah, because he selected Friday 8/10 as the date - and that's when word started leaking out about the Ryan pick.

Meanwhile, it's clear that Mitt Romney didn't take our advice. We asked participants to make a veep recommendation by assigning up to 100 points to a huge number of choices. They could assign 100 points to a sole recommendation, evenly split points to name a bunch of folks, or weight their points to suggest a ranking.

Just 12 people (out of 77) recommended that Romney pick Ryan -- ranking Ryan #8 overall.

On the jump, our top 20 recommendations for Romney.

By Kari Chisholm Aug. 13, 2012